As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to these users is an information handling system. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may vary with respect to the type of information handled; the methods for handling the information; the methods for processing, storing or communicating the information; the amount of information processed, stored, or communicated; and the speed and efficiency with which the information is processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include or comprise a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Examples of information handling systems, including computers such as workstations, desktop computers and portable computers, may typically have a technique for limiting the amount of power consumed by the systems. One technique may involve placing a system in one or more reduced power states. For example, a system may have standby, hibernate and shutdown processes for placing the system in corresponding reduced power states.
Standby may involve, e.g., saving data and instructions to memory, such as volatile memory, and transitioning to a low power state. However, as memory densities and system capacities increase with advances in information handling systems, it may become increasingly important to power down volatile memory due to increasing power requirements. One example of this may be the increasing power requirements associated with refresh requirements of DRAM (dynamic random access memory).
Hibernate may involve, e.g., storing data and instructions to disk and transitioning to a lower power state. However, having different low power states from which to select, such as standby, hibernate and shutdown, may be often be confusing to end users who may have difficulty determining which mode to use. In addition, resuming from standby to a normal operational mode may involve relatively fast processes—e.g., on the order of seconds—but resuming from hibernate to normal operation may be significantly slower by comparison. Although hibernate may consume much less power than standby, the time required to resume from hibernate may be undesirable.